Entry for a small weekly contest held by the two lovable Let's Players Gronkh and Sarazar. The theme this time was to draw them in a medieval or viking setting. ...You guys know how I am. Vikings. And Sarazar is probably one of the most beautiful men on this green earth so how could I resist.But still; Clothes, leather, hands and human skin -all things I have no idea how to paint realistically, much less in only 3 days time. It was hell. And I feel I could have gone a lot further with it, had I had more time and selpt/eaten more. But in the end I did my very, very best and learned a lot -especially about painting fur and hair-, that's all that counts!!

Comments are as always appreciated!

Photoshop CS4, Wacom Intuos 4; [15-20h]The face was painted over the ref *shame* [ sta.sh/012kca5mfbx9 ], the rest is all home made.Special thanks go to *CoyoteMange for her fur tutorial and *nathie for the skin texture brushes. ~cravingotters for the awesome fur stock, `balaa for always being such an inspiration to do better and Miriam N. for enduring my whining and endless self-doubt. Alt. title: 'Prayer before Battle', idk, I really have it with the epic lighting, spiritual...thingering paintings this year. What even-?

Wow, amazing painting Heyriel... this looks absolutely gorgeous, and all the little details look good. I have a question, how have you gotten so good at drawing people? Did you ever go to a figure drawing lesson or did you teach yourself on your own?

Thank you very much! <3Everything I know is 100% self-taught It's no more than the learning process described in the previous reply and too many hours spent drawing to count. Though really, my human anatomy might have improved a lot since I started focusing on anthro works but the human heads I draw are simply horrifying -and I couldn't pick skin colors to save my life. Had I not cheated on those things here, this work would have become a monstrosity, believe it

Overall, this looks great. The lighting and contrast do help in making him pop out greatly. The painting style looks really nice. The same thing can be said for the details. The pose and facial expressions are those that a king would express.

Well, it's good to hear that you learned a lot from the experience working on this. Keep it up, and good luck with the contest.